Alleged Cat Killer Off the Hook

The wheels of justice turn slowly — and too often in animal crimes — not at all.

In June 2009, I wrote about Tyler Weinman, the now-19-year-old boy accused of butchering 19 pet cats in the Miami ‘burbs. When I described the charges against him, I was nearly clairvoyant…

Weinman faces 19 counts of felony animal cruelty, four charges of burglary, and 19 counts of improperly disposing of animal carcasses. He could get 158 years in prison, but we all know he won’t.

Weinman spent more than a year under house arrest, but was freed on November 26. The court dismissed all charges against him and declared unspecified “other animals” the murderers.

Yeah, right. Animals carrying scalpels who took the cats somewhere else to partially skin them, remove their faces, or mutilate them in other horrible ways, and then return them to their front lawns and pose them in grotesque positions for maximum shock to their owners.

The verdict couldn’t be more ludicrous if the judge said the cats committed suicide.

How did justice drop the ball? Only 8 of the 19 cats’ bodies were analyzed. Weinman’s DNA was not found on any of them, nor was the cats’ DNA found on anything of Tyler’s. They admitted that testing for animal DNA is seldom done, so who knows how thorough it was?

In spite of plenty of circumstantial evidence, as well as Weinman’s own self-damning comments when he talked to police, such as when he described happily dissecting cats in biology class, or tried to strike a bargain on the charges, the whole case crumbled on questionable DNA testing.

I suspect we’re looking at a kid who’s watched enough Law & Order to know how to cover his tracks. Thanks to an inept court, I bet he’s feeling pretty smug and invincible right now.

Zappa, they say Jeffrey Dahmer started out practicing on animals, and I’m sure there were many more.

One article I read said that prosecutors felt like they definitely had the right guy, but without the DNA evidence as concrete proof, they couldn’t win a conviction.

So now this kid, if he DID do it, has learned all the ropes of committing the perfect crime, and that’s sure to come in handy if he ever needs to dispose of someone. The techniques he allegedly used would make Jack the Ripper proud.

And when he strikes again, the human victim’s family will be all over TV, wailing about how the authorities KNEW he was a butcher when all those cats were murdered, but let him go free so he could take it to the next level.

People who do this sort of think usually progress to killing people. Why don’t we kill him now and safe the animals and people he’ll kill in the future? I’m not big on the death penalty – but I think it’s a great idea in cases like this. If not, how about a lobotomy?

Out of left field, they’re now saying that 2 “wild dogs” were picked up the same day Tyler was arrested (and all the killing stopped), so they’re pinning the murders on the dogs. Of course, they’ve probably been put down, so they can’t talk.

But that doesn’t explain why the cats’ owners heard nothing during the killings, which now supposedly were committed right in their yards, and why there was no bloody mess around any of the cats’ bodies. NO cat is going to let dogs tear it to shreds and not be fighting and screaming loud enough to wake up the whole neighborhood.

On the 8 cats that were tested, investigators found puncture wounds under the skin and immediately decided the dogs did it, although there’s no mention of them finding any 3rd-party DNA on the wounds, either. But that leaves 11 cats that weren’t tested (because their owners disposed of the bodies).

And if we’re talking about hungry wild dogs, why didn’t they EAT the cats? There was never any mention of the cats looking like something had chowed down on them, just that they had been meticulously mutilated in very sick ways.

I think some human screwed up the investigation and they had to let the kid go. Since his victims this time were only animals, they can blow off their incompetence and say no “crime” was committed. Bullshit.

people like this are just the $&%&%^#*#$# scum of the earth. If life were truly fair, cats would get the chance to return the favor. He certainly wouldn’t be missed; he contributes nothing to society. Why is it only when *humans* are hurt or killed that society suddenly takes notice? Makes me want to round up all my furballs in a big protective hug.

For sure he is going to progress to humans. He sounds like a real psychopath. And you’re right, dogs wouldn’t have done it this way, and you’d have certainly heard something if it were dogs. We had a pack of dogs running loose in our neighborhood about 10 years ago and they did get a few neighborhood outdoor cats. But you heard them barking excitedly as they cornered the target cat. Many a time I ran outside barefoot in my bathrobe (in the winter no less) tryig to chase them away when I heard them. Our cats are indoor cats but my neighbor had a bunch of strays she had taken in and neutered and some of them were outdoor cats and unfortunately were victims.

mauigirl, you’re absolutely right. We’ve been going through hell again with a barking dog, and there’s no way wild dogs would have chased and attacked 19 cats without anybody making a peep.

And there’s no way all those cats just sat there and let the dogs get them. If they’d been mauled by dogs, they’d have been a bloody mess, not looked like somebody performed surgery on them.

The only way the court’s ruling could have been more ludicrous is if they also said a vampire came along behind the dogs and lapped up all the blood, because reports were that there wasn’t a lot of it anywhere.

This piece of human (?) detritus better hope he never meets Mom! Even though we’re inside cats, Mom said she’d like to take this cat murderer and introduce him to our lawn service people’s chipper/shredder because he deserves to die as horrible a death as those poor cats did!

I think the kid has probably learned his lesson on killing cats and won’t risk doing that again. He’ll set his sights on larger prey to continue honing his skills and see how much more he can get away with.

I’m not buying the “innocent little angel, random victim of cruel police” act his parents have had over a year to rehearse him in.